Training has restarted for the second-placed La Liga club as the winter break approaches its end at the turn of 2013, and the Argentine head coach revealed that the 26-year-old has an insatiable desire to improve his game.

"Falcao is crucial [to Atletico] and he has progressed a lot," Simeone acknowledged in an interview with the newspaper The Spectator. “He never tires of creating goals. It’s crazy.

"I had never seen such desire, because he has a hunger, a need for improving and becoming better. He knows that this is his strength, such is his forcefulness to succeed."

Simeone added that he considers Falcao "the best" attacker he has ever coached.